Re: Long blurbs repeated in many package descriptions considered harmful
On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 02:18:19PM +0200, Enrico Zini wrote:
> For example, the pike blurb could be summarised with something like:
>
> Pike is an interpreted, object-oriented, dynamic programming language
> with a syntax similar to C. To learn more about pike, see the package
> pike7.6 or visit http://pike.ida.liu.se/
For pike itself, that's a good description. For pike-pcap, no way.
> I think it is essential to provide information about acronyms and other
> high-tech names, however they should be essential and they shouldn't
> distort search results mentioning things that are not present in the
> package. When the pike module for pcap says what is pike, it's ok. But
> when it mentions image manipulation, database connectivity and XML
> parsers, then it's strongly misleading.
If you want to explain what "pike" is, I think it would be best to
say "pcap is blah blah blah for the pike programming language".
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is exactly the amount of explanation that is due. No less, no
more. It tells a casual user well enough "what is pike", but doesn't
include anything not related to the library itself.
Just my 2 zorkmids,
--
1KB // Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's razor:
// Never attribute to stupidity what can be
// adequately explained by malice.
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